Author notes: New SPN fic! This is an accomplishment. Thanks to brosedshield, whereupon, and dime_for_12 on LJ for the beta help.

Home Remedies

The screen door squeaked swinging in, and Bobby glanced up to see Dean disappear into the kitchen. He reappeared a moment later, swinging a cold beer between two curled fingers as he leaned against the study doorway.

"You finish with that Buick yet?" Bobby asked, flipping through his Latin grammar book.

Dean didn't answer. Bobby looked up, about to ask more pointedly when Dean exploded, "Goddammit, Sam!" In two strides he reached Sam's table and slammed his text shut. Sam jerked back.

"What the hell's gotten into you?" Bobby exclaimed.

Dean was too busy glowering at his brother to glance in his direction. "For someone who's supposed to be so fucking smart, you sure love acting like a dumbass. Did you take anything yet?"

Sam scowled back at him. "It wasn't that bad, jerk."

"So that's a no. And don't even try bullshitting me, I can see right through it every time. Keep your ass there, bitch." Dean whirled out of the room, his boots stomping upstairs a moment later.

Bobby leaned back. "One of you better tell me what the hell's going on."

Sam looked disgruntled. "He's overreacting, being a drama queen." Then he grimaced in a different way, pinching his forehead.

"Your head bothering you?" He had noticed Sam frowning intently as he read, but Bobby had figured he was just in his zone.

Before Sam answered, Dean stormed back in, still snarling. "What was the plan, genius, hold out until you could serenade Bobby with the sound of you puking up your last three meals? I'm sure he'd love to hear that." He shook out pills from a small white bottle and held two of them out an inch before Sam's mouth. "Take them before I ram them down your throat with a shotgun barrel."

"You're such an asshole." Sam swiped and swallowed them dry, tilting his head back.

"Now get upstairs and lie down until it's gone. I swear, you'd walk around with a bullet in your leg until I made you take it out."

Sam stood up, muttering, "You know, Dean, yelling at me never helps it go away," even as he headed up the stairs.

As Dean watched his brother go, Bobby started to chuckle. "Kid, you are the worst mother hen I've ever seen."

Dean's look stopped the laughter. "You've never been through one of Sam's migraines."

"That bad?"

He snorted, taking a seat and snagging his beer from where he'd slammed it on Sam's table. "Mother of all ugly headaches. If I let him near a knife, he'd try to saw his own head off. Don't think I'm kidding."

The edge in his voice told Bobby it wasn't an exaggeration. "Huh." He was silent for a moment. "Ever taken him to see someone for it?"

"Hell yeah, a couple clinics. It's not like they can give him an MRI, but they told him to take Excedrin, and it usually works. When he catches it quick enough and isn't being a moron." He glared in the direction of the upper floor.

Bobby rolled his eyes. "Well, I wonder where he learned that from. Family of idjits." Dean chose to ignore that. Bobby tapped his pen against an illustration of a wendigo. "How long has this been going on?"

Dean shrugged, rolling the wet bottle between his hands. "Few years. Since he started growing like he's on HGH. They never happen too often - or they didn't until a year ago, right before his freshman year, when he started getting them every Friday night. Made hell out of my social calendar," he added, just in case there was any doubt it wasn't an utter pain to take care of his brother.

Bobby wasn't even going to comment on that last part. Like he hadn't known them since Sam was crawling and Dean leashed him by the ankle to make sure he didn't tumble down the stairs. As though Dean had grown out of that at all. Maybe that's what Bobby'd get him for Christmas, a bright red extra-long leash. "You think you caught it in time now?"

"Think so. He hadn't crawled under the desk to die like a sick dog, so probably. I already closed the curtains in the bedroom, and as long as we don't go banging pots and pans around down here, he should be okay in an hour."

The image of Dean drawing the curtains upstairs made Bobby snort. "You're still a mother hen."

Dean took a swig of beer, resolutely refusing to meet his eye. "Yeah, well, who else is going to do it?"